Trade, study, and tourism have ground to a halt between the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk and the Chinese city of Heihe since Russia closed the border amid coronavirus fears
The Nenets call themselves “the children of the reindeer.” They number fewer than 50,000. In Russia’s hostile tundra conditions, their lives are much as they were hundreds of years ago
Serbian parents who say their newborn babies were stolen from hospital maternity wards have called for better legislation to help them find their missing children. They held a protest outside parliament in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, on February
centuries, artisans in the city of Herat have made the ceramic tiles that decorate Afghan mosques. But as mass-produced tiles replace handmade ones, the craftsmen fear that their tradition may be dying out
Investigators sealed off the site where a police officer reportedly shot her parents and two brothers to death and then killed herself in Gjilan, southeastern Kosovo. All five people were discovered dead at the scene
Security forces detained opposition supporters as they were gathering to protest outside Azerbaijan’s election commission building in the capital, Baku, on February 16. A candidate for the opposition Musavat Party, Faraj Karimli, was detained while speaking to journalists. The demonstrators decried reported violations in the February 9 parliamentary elections. According to police, the protest was not officially sanctioned, but the opposition says the constitution does not require any official permission to demonstrate..An iconic monument in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, has been returned to its familiar place in a city park after months of restoration work
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani banned the hunting of rare birds and animals two years ago, but hunting continues across the country and the hides of rare animals can be bought in markets in the capital, Kabul
In the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, about 200 people work in shifts to search through the ash dump of a heating plant. Desperately poor, they are looking for unburned pieces of coal to sell. It’s hard work, but the only way to make a living for many of them during the winter
The clashes, which erupted overnight on February 8, were some of the worst ethnic violence in years in the Zhambyl region in southern Kazakhstan, sending hundreds across the border into neighboring Kyrgyzstan. It is not yet known what sparked the violence, which pitted ethnic Kazakhs against Dungans, a Muslim group of Chinese origin
A settlement in western Afghanistan has become known as the “village of widows.” Some 50 women in the village of Mir Ali in Herat Province’s Adraskan district have lost their husbands, with many killed or executed after smuggling drugs across the Iranian border